From the start, I loved Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. That feeling continued onto the end. The consistently fun adventure made Indiana Jones GOTY for me. Even with the save issue I ran into popping up again, I still enjoyed my entire adventure.
Continuing my Adventures in Giza
Although the Vatican from the beginning is still my favorite, Giza (or Gizeh in the game) scratched that Egyptian archaeologist itch. The Pyramids and Sphinx are the most recognizable site of ancient artifacts. Would be a crime to leave them out.
Seeing all the glyphs and tombs recreated in great detail is a sight to behold in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle game engine. Seriously, path tracing, thanks to my 4090, looks so good. Exploring tombs with the lighter and torches painting color realistically on the walls makes the experience more enjoyable.
Giza also unveils more of the big bad, Voss. He’s such a convincing and unique Nazi villain. While I wasn’t racing to discover artifacts before him, I took plenty of time to explore. Learning from the Vatican, I bought the various guides in Giza to ensure I found ever relic I could.
The disguises made a return. I enjoyed dressing as one of the laborers and then as a Nazi soldier. It’s definitely worth getting the disguises (usually via the main mission) early. It’s much easier to navigate and explore without every bad guy chasing me.
The whole thing was capped off by an amazing underground temple and an interesting fight with a blind giant. It was a nice change from punching Nazis to try to outsmart that giant in the dark. Using sound as a lure was effective, but intimidating in such low light. My Alienware OLED flexes that True Dark 400 there.
When I uncovered everything I could in Giza, it was off to the Himalayas to find the ship from the Indy game trailers.
Scaling the Himalayas Like Indiana Jones GOTY Climb
From the beautiful architecture of the Vatican to the deserts of Giza, Indiana Jones is great at switching scenery. The sands of the desert were replaced with the snow of the Himalayas. Walking through the snow and scaling the cliffs was a great change.
The whole goal was to find the next artifact in a ship that somehow appeared on the top of the mountains. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle explains how, but I won’t spoil it here. Exploring the cramped interiors of the ship was much more linear than Giza, but great fun unraveling how the ship arrived there.
Once the Nazi’s showed up, things went downhill, literally. It took a lot of fancy whip work to escape the ship before it crashed down the mountain. A nice bit of action to spice up the slower exploration sections.
When I did escape unharmed, it was off to a quick trip down to Shanghai. Beautiful scenery, but it was in the middle of a Japanese invasion. Their Zero planes flew overhead and even crashed into buildings. That whole section ended with the exciting plane chase, flashing me back to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
These trips all bookended with the classic Indiana Jones animated world travel map like the movies. I loved these linear action levels to mix things up. There’s so much love and car to reproduce the aesthetic of the original Indy trilogy.
Exploring the Sunken Temples of Sukhothai
After my quick detours through the Himalayas and Shanghai, Indiana Jones took me to the final large open area map in Sukhothai. The inn at the start was beautiful with the great model work and path tracing reproducing near perfect lighting (the main photo at the top of this post).
I enjoyed a firefight alongside the rebel locals before retreating to the village that served as the main hub of the area. Besides the jungle theme, the flooding in the area made for a big change. In order to easily navigate to all the bases and temples in the area, Gina and I used a boat.
Keeping with the water theme of the map, I acquired a rebreather to facilitate exploring the sunken temples. That piece of equipment also unlocked hidden areas in previous maps for me to go back and explore. Exploration is top notch and really makes Indiana Jones GOTY level.
Combat is fun and comically Indy, but he’s an archaeologist first. To that end, the ancient cog puzzles littering the area were super annoying at first. I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out the right placement of cogs to get doors open.
All Cogged Up
It wasn’t until later that I realized the small cogs from each puzzle fit into my inventory. Once I started collecting those, even the hardest of the puzzles was no match for me. Most simply led to the weird Ancient Relics that all looked the same.
There was one puzzle though, that led me to a crazy hallucination of Marshall College overgrown with weeds. Definitely one of the most memorable side missions. The main mission of Sukhothai though, was heavily inspired by something out of one of the Anaconda movies.
Avoiding a giant snake while exploring a sunken temple was probably one of the most tense parts of the game. The climax of Sukhothai scratched the action itch with a guns blazing boat chase. That was it for the large open areas and onto the final location for the Indy’s adventure, Iraq.
Iraq was the Last Stop on the Indiana Jones GOTY Effort
The final area was a mix between the open areas like Giza and more linear levels. There were plenty of paths to get to the temple of Ziggurat in Iraq, but from there it was more like a funnel to the end. Even after all the hours I put in, beating up Nazis in Iraq was still fun.
Ziggurat’s big reveal was another famous religious artifact. I won’t spoil it here, but it was a great choice for the finale. The same can be said for my fist fight with Voss and his almost embarrassing Karate. With all the guide upgrades I acquired, he was no match. When I defeated him, I was both relieved and depressed.
I was glad to finish the adventure and move onto a new game, but part of me was not ready for the adventure to end. Indiana Jones GOTY chances were slimmed with it’s late release, but what an end to a big year in gaming.
Looking Forward to the Order of the Giants DLC
After finally rolling credits on my Indy adventure, I went back to tackle the giant door puzzle I found in Iraq. It was odd that the Ancient Relics I spent a ton of time finding and collecting all looked the same. In the end though, it made sense since they were keys to the door puzzle.
50 Ancient Relics was the magic number to open the giant door and it wasn’t easy. Twisting left or right filled in different spaces. It took me quite a long time to find the right spots and rotation, but I did. It’s just a tease for the Order of the Giants DLC.
The door opened, but there was nothing for me to see other than a giant mural. At least not yet. What I did get was an extra ending cutscene to see what happened to Locus (RIP Tony Todd). It seems like the perfect setup for the DLC and I can’t wait for Order of the Giants.
Unfortunately, I was not able to go back and collect all the notes I missed. The save issue I ran into reset the mission state of Giza and the Vatican. Maybe a future patch will fix it. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the rare game I actually want to 100%